


Day 5: Work – The Sound of Thunder

by 221b_hound



Series: Techienician: Botanical Love [6]
Category: Dredd (2012), Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: 30 Days of Techienician, Bullying, M/M, Techienician, Workplace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 02:39:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7959130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt doesn't ever mean to frighten Techie with his temper, but some days he's bullied beyond bearing and he comes home raging. He never means to frighten Techie, but he does. But Techie knows Matt isn't angry at him, and he's got some clever ideas on how to get even instead of getting mad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day 5: Work – The Sound of Thunder

Jex and Parvinak are bad today. Really, really bad. They think because Shift Supervisor Leslee doesn’t seem to notice or care that they can do anything and get away with it.

At lunchtime in the mess hall, they ‘accidentally’ tip Matt’s lunch all over his lap. They pretend to help and mash green pureed vegetables into his hair. He gets so angry that he pushes Jex so hard he falls over, tripping Parvinak, who goes head-first into the drink dispenser. Parvinak’s foot kicks out and he knocks Leslee’s blue milk and muffin flying, and once more it’s zero days since the last accident and somehow that’s all Matt’s fault _again_.

Matt comes back to their quarters in a rage. He is flinging off his tool belt as he comes in – it goes crashing against the wall and to the floor. He bellows an inarticulate roar of anger as he enters the room, fists clenched at his side, and as the door closes he turns and punches it. It hurts, but he’s glad it does, because it gives all the pain and rage inside somewhere to focus, somewhere to get out.

Clutching his hurting hand – the knuckles are bleeding – he turns again, still roaring his impotent fury… and the sound dies, it dies in its throat, it dies and cannot even be a whimper, the rage is gone so fast, because there on the bed, pressed right up into the corner, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around his shins, his blue eyes hugely wide, is Techie.

He’s scared Techie.

He’s scared his beautiful Techie.

Matt goes down like a tree felled by lighting. He goes white as a sheet and he goes down to his knees and he wraps his big arms around himself as though he is physically restraining the bad part of himself and keeping it away from Techie.

“I’m sorry,” he says. And he is. His voice is broken with his shame and weak with grief. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Techie blinks at him over the top of his bony knees, from underneath his straggly red hair.

“I’ll go.” Matt tries to get up but his knees won’t work. He stumbles.

Suddenly Techie is in front of him, reaching out, and Matt shies away because he’s no good and he doesn’t mean to hurt Techie but he has, he’s scared him, he’s no good…

“Ssssshhhh,” says Techie, and he grabs hold of Matt, so that Matt has to stop trying to crawl away or he really will hurt his darling boy this time, and he mustn’t, he mustn’t. So Matt holds perfectly still and sobs.

“Ssssshhhh,” says Techie again, wrapped around Matt now that Matt is still. His arms are around Matt’s shoulders and he’s pulled Matt’s head against his stomach. Matt’s glasses are askew but Matt doesn’t care because Techie is patting Matt’s hair like it’s going to be okay. “Sssssshhh.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sssshhh.”

“I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t.”

“I did.”

“I’m not scared of you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sssshhh.” Techie kisses the top of his head, and now Matt’s arms wrap around Techie’s hips and he holds on tight. Techie’s fingers run through his hair.

“Don’t leave,” whispers Matt, “Please. I’ll be good. I won’t shout any more. I won’t… I won’t hurt you. Not ever.”

“I know.” Techie pats Matt’s face and tilts it up so Techie can kiss his forehead. Techie wipes his thumbs across Matt’s cheeks, smearing away tears, and he adjusts Matt’s glass.

“I’m sorry I do that when you shout,” says Techie.

Matt is so ashamed that Techie is apologising for being scared of him. He can’t bear to look at Techie, but he can’t bear to look away. “It’s not your fault,” says Matt, still stricken.

“I know what they do to you and how mad you get,” says Techie, “But I never think you’ll hurt me. I’m not scared of _you_. It’s just… the noise.” He blinks and his bionic eyes shrink and dilate, shrink and dilate, like he’s trying to read something that eludes him. “I… remember. Other things.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” says Techie, giving the exoneration back to him. “It’s Ma-ma’s. She used to… there was always shouting before she…” He can’t bring himself to say the things the Crime Clan leader used to do. “So now, it’s like being scared of thunder. I know it won’t hurt me. It just _sounds_ like pain. But it’s just _noise_. I know that.”

It sort of helps and it also absolutely doesn’t. Matt is trying to make himself small and harmless. He’s trying to pull away from Techie so he can curl into a corner.

But Techie won’t let him because Techie has realised something.

He doesn’t like loud noises. He doesn’t like shouting. He’s not scared of Matt when he shouts, but he can’t help going very still, trying to be the smallest of small targets because Ma-ma was cruel and looked for the tiniest excuse. And that’s what Jex and Parvinak and that useless Leslee are doing to Matt. Smaller scale, maybe, but it’s the shallow end of that deep pool of cruelty.

What Techie hated most about those days he doesn’t talk about was how powerless he felt.

What Techie sees happening to Matt is how powerless those flark-brained nerfherders make _him_ feel.

Techie used to go small with his powerlessness so they wouldn’t hurt him; and Matt yells, but now he’s going small, and both of those are wrong because they are not powerless. They don’t have to _be_ powerless. And if nobody with power will intervene, well then, Techie will intervene and take the power back, because nothing that happens on this ship, nothing, will ever scare him like he used to be scared by Ma-ma. It’s just not kriffing possible.

Techie drops down and wraps himself around Matt and kisses and kisses and kisses Matt’s face until Matt stops trying to run away.

“We’re going to get those sleemos back,” Techie promises him, “And they won’t know what hit them.”

While Techie tells Matt his plan, Matt is very still. He listens. And he begins to smile.

Techie, you see, is unobtrusive. He has distinctive looks but in the scheme of things, nobody knows just how clever he is, nor how lightfooted. Nor lightfingered.

Over the next week, a series of minor mishaps affect Jex’s workstation, and Parvinak’s. They don’t know it’s because Techie has subtly altered the layout of their touchscreens, moving icons a half width one way or another. Every time they jab at an icon and try to move it, according to their muscle memory of years, they hit the wrong button. It’s nothing serious. Nothing to endanger the ship. But they make mistake after mistake and Leslee is increasingly angry with them.

Then her little break treats keep going missing, or getting squashed or broken. Those sweet treats that help her through the day (and that she never gets enough of to share with the others on shift) become a tiny but thorough disappointment. When she finds in Jex’s locker crumbs of the last muffin found squashed like it’s been sat on, she lets fly and yells at him, bearing down on him until he backs right over the grav-spanner he left on the floor, and now it’s _his_ fault that there have been zero days since the last accident.

Techie is really very sneaky and excellent at stealing food because it’s how he survived for a lot of his life, before _and_ after the clan got hold of him.

It is the most fun Matt’s had at work, ever. None of those awful bullies even think to blame Matt because they don’t think Matt’s smart enough or subtle enough to do all those fine little sabotages, and it wouldn’t occur to them to think Techie brave enough to do them.

It doesn’t occur to any of those idiots that Techie and Matt together are more than they are alone.

By the end of that week, Leslee has new least-favourite workers in her sights, and she’s appreciating how Matt’s just quietly getting on with his job, competently and thoroughly even if a bit more slowly than the others.

It’s not that Jex and Parvinak give up on picking on Matt completely. It’s just that now, whenever Matt is goaded beyond endurance, he does not rage. He goes home and he _whispers_ , and his Techie goes _steely_. And they plot and giggle at the sweetness of tiny, perfect revenge.


End file.
